The project on British architecture

Made by Tatiana Piven and Nataly Smirnova

“The Big Ben”

The Big Benhistory and the construction

The Clock Tower of the Palace of

Westminster-officially named Saint Stephen’s

Tower-is commonly known as the Big Ben.

The tower is one of the London’s most

famous landmarks

The Clock Tower was raised as a part of the

rebuilt Palace of Westminster destroyed by fire on

the night of 16 October 1834.

The tower was built by Augustus Pugin in 1844 in

gothic style as a symbol of the power and greatness

of the British Empire in the XIX century

The tower was completed in 1858 and is 96

meters high and has 16 storeys. Because of

the excavation of tunnels near Westminster

the rower tilts 0,9 mm each year since 2003.

It has 4 dials which are directed towards the 4

cardinal directions

The clock was the largest in the world and is still

the largest in Great-Britain. The clock faces have a

diameter of almost 7.5m. The hour hand is 2.7m

long and the minute hand measures 4.25m long.

There are even cells within the clock tower

where Members of Parliament can be

imprisoned for a breach of parliamentary

privilege, though this is rare; the last recorded

case was in 1880.

The clock's movement is famous for its reliability. The designers were the

lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison, and George

Airy, the Astronomer Royal. Construction was entrusted to clockmaker

Edward John Dent. The clockwork mechanism in a room below weighs 5

tons. Its pendulum is 4.0 m long, weighs 300 kg and beats every 2 seconds.

On top of the pendulum is a small stack of old penny coins. Adding or

removing a penny will change the clock's speed by 0.4 seconds per day.

There are five bells. The clock’s hour bell is the largest and is

commonly known as Big Ben. The other four are used as quarter

bells.

The main bell, officially known as the Great Bell, is the largest bell in the

tower, it’s better known by the nickname Big Ben. The hour bell was

probably named after Benjamin Hall, the First Commissioner of Works.

Some sources however claim the bell was named after Benjamin Caunt, a

British heavyweight boxing champion. It’s 16 tons weight.

The clock is known for its reliability, it has rarely failed during its long

life span. Even after the nearby House of Commons was destroyed by

bombing during World War II on May 1941, the clock kept on

chiming. The clock's mechanism, designed by Edmund Beckett

Denison, has a remarkable accuracy.